Recovery
by SnowyPicture
Summary: Jacin is sick, but Winter won't let him suffer through it alone.


_Recovery_

When Jacin saw who stood in his doorway, he scowled.

"Princess," he said, pushing himself up on one elbow, his head protesting at the slight elevation. "You cannot be in here."

Winter smiled, a pleasant, lovely thing that caught the sunlight that slipped between the curtains drawn over his windows. She stepped forward into the room and pushed the door closed quietly behind her, a tray in her hands.

"On the contrary," said Winter, drawing closer to the bed, "I can be here, because I am here, because no one stopped me coming in."

"Except for the room's inhabitant," Jacin said, but he was already sinking back onto his pillow.

Winter set the tray down carefully on the table beside his bed, then walked to the other end of his room and grabbed an armchair. It was a bright, cushy thing, and when she dragged it all the way over to his bedside and sat down in it, curling her legs up beneath her, Jacin thought it looked a little like she was sitting on a cloud. "Maybe you should post a guard," she said, and winked.

Jacin chose not to respond to this. "I am sick," he said. As if on queue, a shiver ran through him. He repressed it.

Winter merely looked at him. "Sick people need tending to."

"You could catch it."

She began to uncover the items on the tray, steam from something hot curling toward the ceiling. "It is hardly the plague."

Like they did in his bad dreams, images of her, blue-cheeked and deathly, rose to the surface of his mind, her skin blotchy and bruised and angry with boils.

Jacin closed his eyes. "Not funny, Princess."

A pause, then he felt her fingers on his wrist, cool and light as air. "You're right. I'm sorry."

He opened his eyes again. He was tempted to look down at their hands, but instead he directed his gaze to her face. She was already looking at him.

Her expression brightened by degrees. Even though a fever was raging through his veins, Jacin felt himself thawing.

"Now," she said, letting go of his wrist and turning back to her tray. "I have brought you some food to make you feel better. If you still don't like that it is me here, we shall simply pretend I am an anonymous doctor, and you are my patient."

"Princess," Jacin said. It was beginning to make his throat itch, all this talking. "It doesn't bother me that you are you. I just don't want you to be sick."

"I will be fine," said Winter, filling a small cup with steaming, sweet scented tea. "I am strengthening my immunity to Earthen illnesses by exposure." She gave him another wink.

He sighed, but before he could respond she held the cup out to him. "I think you'll need to sit up for this."

With only a slight force of will, Jacin obediently pushed himself up so that his shoulders leaned against the headboard of his bed. His hair flopped limply over his eyes and he pushed it away. He felt lightheaded and woozy, and it must have showed, because when he looked back at Winter, there was a new softness to her eyes.

"Here," she said, and pressed the cup into his hands. "I have a feeling you've been slacking on your fluids."

"I can tell you have a lot of faith in my ability to take care of myself," Jacin said, but he was amused, and she was right, anyway. He hadn't gotten out of bed at all since he'd woken up that morning, and hadn't had anything to eat or drink since the night before.

"Why do something by yourself when someone is willing to help?" Winter said, watching him as he took a sip. It was just hot enough that it pleasantly soothed his throat as he swallowed it, like a layer of ice over burning skin. He took another sip, and his throat no longer felt scratchy and painful. She'd slipped a numbing agent in the tea.

He closed his eyes. "Thank you, Princess."

"Winter."

Jacin opened his eyes again and found her gaze, eyes brown and wide and flecked with silver. Her hands were folded neatly on the sheets in front of her. "I like it when you call me by my name."

The impulse to oppose this climbed up his throat, born of the years and years of domination and oppression Levana had held over both of their heads. It slowly dissolved as he remembered that she was dead, her tyranny gone. He and Winter had been on Earth performing ambassadorial duties for several weeks now, but it was going to take far longer than that to undo years of suppression.

He was still growing used to the fact that he and Winter could be whoever they liked, whatever they liked. Especially with each other.

He nodded, holding her eyes. "Thank you, Winter."

She smiled, pressing her lips together sweetly in a way that made her look almost shy. Jacin's heartrate accelerated only slightly as she held his eyes. After a moment, she unfolded her hands and brought one to his face.

"You're flushed," she said. Like they had on his wrist, her fingers felt cool and light against his cheek.

For an embarrassing moment Jacin thought she was commenting on the way he was reacting to her presence, before she clicked her tongue and turned back to her tray, and he realized she was talking about his fever. His heart slowed mercifully as her hand fell away.

"Here," she said, uncovering a bowl. More steam lifted into the air, and when she handed it out to him, he saw that it was soup, filled with noodles and white, fresh-cut pieces of meat. The savory smell nearly overwhelmed him – he hadn't realized how hungry he was.

"Chicken soup," Winter said as he took it into his hands. "A delicacy that goes back centuries, I've heard." She rose her eyebrows at him.

After a few spoonfuls, his stomach began to settle and the lightheaded feeling behind his eyes began to fade. Another palliative.

"Thank you," he said again, feeling her eyes watching him attentively, setting the half-eaten bowl in his lap.

She brought her hand back up to his face, eyebrows drawn in astute determination, pressing her cool palm to his forehead. "I think your fever is going down."

"I guess you're a fairly good doctor after all," he said, mouth quirking, only half-teasing.

Like the flip of a switch, her face brightened into another smile. Winter met his eyes, face softening, and after a moment, instead of taking her hand from his face, she gently pushed his hair back where it had begun to fall over his eyes again. There was a direct carefulness to the action, like his hair might be made out of something delicate.

Slowly, her hand came to settle on his cheek, her soft palm soothing against his hot skin. And yet his heart had begun to race again. It was as if all his nerve endings were connected to this one touch.

"You're not a bad patient, either," she said, her face only slightly closer than it had been before, "even though you like to resist treatment at first."

Her other hand snaked along the sheets until it picked at the fingers of his free hand. She brushed the tips of her fingers over his knuckles, until he couldn't bare it anymore and slid his fingers into the space between hers.

Her touch was not new, or it shouldn't have felt like it was, anyway, after all these weeks. After all these years. They both moved slowly in their synchronized dance, a balance of recovery and freedom.

She hadn't had a hallucination since they had successfully installed the bioelectricity device in her head, and even that was taking some getting used to. But Winter was still Winter, and she was still perfect. Always would be perfect.

And yet, it was a flame that had burned inside of both of them for so long, and now that it was free to meet the air, it sometimes felt like it was sucking up all the oxygen between them.

Winter rubbed her thumb against the delicate skin beneath his eye. Jacin could stay like this forever.

The flame thrived.

"I wish-" he started before he could help himself, squeezing her hand out of impulse. His eyes dropped to her lips, soft and pink and lovely. He felt himself flush as he realized what he had been about to say.

Winter just smiled, looking exceptionally pleased. She took her hand from his cheek and squeezed his hand with both of hers. "You must recover, Mr. Clay-patient."

He chuckled slightly, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "If you stay in here much longer, you are going to catch what I have."

Winter clucked her tongue again. "Now, that's a chance a good doctor must take." What he heard was, stop being silly and pretending you want me to leave.

Jacin felt his mouth stretch into a soft smile. "Thank you, then, doctor."

Winter smiled again, eyes gentle and alight, and brought his hand up to her lips. Jacin's breath caught in his throat as she pressed a soft kiss to each knuckle.

"I am Winter," she said, pressing a kiss to the inside of his palm before she cradled it against her own cheek, like something cherished, "and I am taking care of you, because you are Jacin."

Jacin smiled back.

It made all the sense in the world.

* * *

A/N: I'm sure they'd have some sort of futuristic fever-killing medicine that would work in like 5 seconds, but...let me have this.


End file.
